Spanish GL/Civil Service Slingshot

I think variations on this strategy have been posted but I have found this to work real well on Emperor. Basically, I rush Writing and after building my initial 2 scouts (I play a ton as Spain) and my Monument, I typically start in on the Great Library.

Policies: Tradition opener, liberty opener, liberty (Free worker), Aristocracy (+15% wonders). Free worker should drop roughly on cue with the start of the GL. I almost always have an early cultural CS ally with the Spanish wonder cash. If you got lucky and found 2 natural wonders or the holy grail, the Great Barrier Reef, you can get two early cultural CS allies.

Techs: Pottery/Writing/Animal Husbandry/Philosophy/Trapping. If you time it right, you can be almost exactly finished with Trapping the same time as the GL hits.

At this point, the bigger deal is not the free library or free 30+ turn tech (Civil Service), it is slingshotting to the Medieval era, where your cultural CS bonuses become huge for that stage of the game, and Patronage opens up. You can absolutely cruise Patronage at that stage with +24 culture (plus your own) at your back. It is possible to be through almost all of it by 0 AD. Makes the +2 culture of France seem weak.

You can also add another CS ally or two through some exploration at this point. Get sailing next and the Trireme out there and find that reef! 1000 gold in BC times is such a monster.

Note: This also works with Theology as well. One could then build the Hagia Sophia and use the GE to build Chichen Itza.

ive been doing this with babylon... medieval by turn 40 as well as patronage opener at about the same time... aside from pottery and writing, all techs at the top of the tree till hit medieval

It's hot, but you cannot pull it off consistently on Deity even with the ruins off, and Patronage is a shadow of its former monstrous self. Babylon's Academy and the Theology line give you the best chance of pulling this off at the Deity level.

Turn the ruins off if you're going for an early Wonder at high levels.

I do pull this off on Deity, consistently and with ruins turned on. Unfortunately not with Isabella, but with the Mongols and on Epic or Marathon and only when settling centrally on a Pangeaea map near a mining luxury.. (other luxuries are too slow as in that casse you will need to tech a lot more)

Bulbing Civil Service then works if you tech Mining/Pottery/Writing/Archery/AH/Philo/Trapping and start working on the GL soon as writing hits. Meanwhile run down the Honour tree (left side first), sell the mining lux to your most aggressive neighbour, make sure you have built several archers to fend off your city, work on the National College once Philo hits and then go for an additonal settler for your nearest 4horses tile. After CS, beeling to Chivalry and start building 3 Keshiks + 1 Horseman, just like in the Mongol scenario. You will find yourself all the way at the bottom of the ranking list with a couple of DoW's on you, but with several strong, promoted archers and with Keshiks ready to take down your strongest neighbour with horses. Don't let them Keshiks get killed and from that point (after killing your strongest neighbour with horses) it is grinding your way up the ladder. Epic is key here, as it allows you to get most from moving units (the grinding doesn't work fast enough on Standard).

Settling centrally allows you to get DoW'd upon quickly, it lets you meet all of your neighbours (which allows you to know who the strongest of your neighbours is and also ensures that at least someone has 360 gold for your lux) and ensures your horses can quickly help defend attacked cities (if needed; shouldn't be the case if eventually you go Tradition > Oligarchy).

THIS IS FOR WARMONGERS! .. and only works if your take down the strongest nations first!

I don't get how you can pull this off consistently on deity Evahaut, I've only had little time to play since the patch but theres roughly 4 out of 10 games where GL is built by AIs on turns 31-32, 5 out of 10 on 36-37 and randomly once in a while past 40. As much as I can pull the GL by turn 35-36, I can't seem to hard tech properly for CS sling consistently. If I just beeline, I get destroyed for not having walls availible on the first zergs.

anyway, I have to agree w/ Martin on the call although I'm sure it is a very reliable opener even on immortal. The gap between immortal and deity feels even bigger now than prepatch.

Deau said:

I don't get how you can pull this off consistently on deity Evahaut, I've only had little time to play since the patch but theres roughly 4 out of 10 games where GL is built by AIs on turns 31-32, 5 out of 10 on 36-37 and randomly once in a while past 40. As much as I can pull the GL by turn 35-36, I can't seem to hard tech properly for CS sling consistently. If I just beeline, I get destroyed for not having walls availible on the first zergs.

anyway, I have to agree w/ Martin on the call although I'm sure it is a very reliable opener even on immortal. The gap between immortal and deity feels even bigger now than prepatch.

Click to expand...

Maybe playing on Epic/Marathon messes with the AIs timings. I know it weakens it's % production modifiers.

Getting the GL *is* possible on Deity pre-35-36 without the AI beating you to it (~70% of the time now, but obviously depends on the AIs in the game). It is somewhat map dependant (water maps have the Great Lighthouse and Colossus entering the AI queues) and you need a strong starting location with either Liberty (so 2 workers by Writing) or stealing a CS worker. (If you went Aristocracy)

you need 2-3 forests, a couple stone or sheep (AH post-writing) and a hill or two. Decent food tiles (3 food/turn tiles) will help get the science and production side up and running faster.

lucky ruin pops of a) pop, b) Tech - Mining, c) culture (earlier worker) speed it up obviously.

After all of that... you can't use it for Theology or CS since you'll never get the techs done in time, so I just use it for Philosophy. (turn 30-35) (except for Babylon obviously)

I can get the GL fairly routinely on Deity as well... though not for a medieval tech. I get the impression that a lot of people play Deity with tons of other civs on the map. That really lowers your chances. I personally usually play on Epic, Large, with the standard 10 civs. One trick I've found that's useful is early build (or steal if that's an option) a worker and rush buy a granary ASAP. Use the additional food to focus entirely on production and use aristocracy. As Egypt this works quite well. As others it still works farily well.

EDIT: One thing to note... although it can be done and with sacrifice (and luck) it can be done some consistently depending on settings... I'm not sure its worth it if you don't have a secondary plan in mind to back up the GL. Doing all this to get the GL is cutting severely into your natural growth and resource improvements and expansion. So if you don't have a really strong use for it, it's probably not worth your time. For example... if you go this route and have an expansive neighbour nearby, you've probably lost your good city sites doing so. So you better have a military to conquer them.

On a side note. I wish Spain started with a scout and a warrior. I hate the fact that their bonus is so random. I either feel like A) they are very cool and unbalanced some games cause I get a worker at like turn 5 or B) they are the most useless civ in the game. A scout, to me, would allow them to at least grab extra ruins so in the event that you find nothing else first, at least you've got something.

From my experience and other posts on the forums it sounds like it's much much easier to build GL on Marathon.

Considering you not only need to get lucky with your start as well as lucky with the AI starts to build a GL normally, it's something I'd hate to rely on. As I posted in another thread, yesterday I saw a turn 29 GL, with ruins off.

If you can get a Medieval tech for it, that's amazing though

I do bulb CS for my free tech on Deity, and do so consistently. I will post some gameplay saves when I’m home.

What is true however, is that Philo is +-15 turns away from being researched when the GL is about to finish. On GL's last building turn however, I switch back production to something else and hold off its completion until both Philosophy & Trapping are researched. It seems AI isn’t even trying to build GL if you start to build it yourself soon enough..

Up to that point these games are all about archers and tower defense.

Ok here is one I just played. Bulbed CS and after monument I am heading for NC.

so how does the op strat relate only to spain? just because you potentially get more money from exploring?

I tried it and didn't find any wonders

pontias said:

so how does the op strat relate only to spain? just because you potentially get more money from exploring?

I tried it and didn't find any wonders

Click to expand...

It isn't only Spain, per se. You can do all the steps with the GL with any civ. Heck, you are probably better using Babylon or Egypt just to do the slingshot.

However, no civ can match Spain's potential for big early money. This lets you buy multiple early CS allies at or around the same time you enter the medieval era and get the outsized bonuses (particularly ) for that early stage of the game.

This strategy is as much about insane early as it is anything else.

fmlizard2 said:

However, no civ can match Spain's potential for big early money.

Click to expand...

Spain has a lot more potential, that's for sure. The problem is Songhai with Raging Barbs will almost always generate more revenue - except for the odd game and/or specifically 'cheesing map settings'. Due to how long games can take at longer speeds, I'm not a huge fan, personally, of 'hoping for the best'

This description intrigued me, so I fired up Isabella and I would say that I found a wonder first in about 1 in 10 starts... these were all immortal/fractal/large/standard maps. Of course when you do find the wonder, you don't find a cultural city state...

I did get one start where I found 3 (including Cerro de Potosi), of course that turned out to be an isolated landmass with me and a hostile military CS. Arrgh!

In my opinion Spain's UA is the worst suckers bet I've run into in a while.

Aoxomoxoa said:

This description intrigued me, so I fired up Isabella and I would say that I found a wonder first in about 1 in 10 starts... these were all immortal/fractal/large/standard maps. Of course when you do find the wonder, you don't find a cultural city state...

I did get one start where I found 3 (including Cerro de Potosi), of course that turned out to be an isolated landmass with me and a hostile military CS. Arrgh!

In my opinion Spain's UA is the worst suckers bet I've run into in a while.

Click to expand...

The best way to find early natural wonders first (other than just lucking out) is to get in a trireme, embark a scout, or even just make sure you walk the coastlines. Krakatoa, Rock of Gibraltar, and the super-awesome +1000 and +4 Great Barrier Reef require this. And the AI tends to miss them well into the game.

In my latest game I had a non-workable Great Barrier Reef near me but had to get in the trireme to be able to sight it.

I decided to try this and I found Old Faithful and a workable Barrier reef on the first map I rolled up. The early money is really really nice, but so is the output from that reef!

Obviously you need to get a bit lucky with this, but it is a lot of fun when you do. I think if you play on continents you'll have a better shot of finding a natural wonder or two.

The Spain portion of this relates to having big-time cash to get 1-2 cultural CS's online very, very early. 1 is good, 2 is more than twice as good lol!

Spain really is a funny civ. It always grants you a bit of extra happiness eventually. The money thing, as others have said, is totally random. However Spain is very close to being overpowered. By this I mean, I made a mod to increase the number of natural wonders to 10 (all of them) on a large map. I played as Spain and every single time I found at least 1 nearby and 3 or 4 more once I got a boat sailing around (not all of them found first, mind you). Those starts were so powerful that it was rediculous. I knew increasing the number would help them more than anyone else, but I didn't think just adding 4 more would be so overwhelming a change.

(For anyone who wants to try this, technically you can't make a mod to do it as the value for number of wonders is not in the XML. It's hard coded inside the LUA scripts. I can't recall where right now but I can find it if someone is interested.)